Traditional paper telephone directory listings such as the White Pages, Yellow Pages and industry-specific directory listings are well known. Online or Web-based directory listings are the Online analogues to their familiar, traditional paper counterparts. With the advent of the Internet and the Web (World-Wide-Web), many owners and publishers of these directories have begun to offer their services Online. These Online directory services are expanding beyond simply providing name, address and telephone information and have begun to offer E-mail directory listings, Web page address listings, fax directory listings, consumer tips directory listings, emergency provider directory listings and much more.
As in the traditional paper counterparts, the publishers of these Online directory listings sell advertising space to businesses and organizations to cover the expense of compiling these directories. One of the advantages to advertisers in the Web medium over the paper medium is the use of multimedia in advertising. Multimedia technologies such as text, graphics, audio and full motion video on the Web are becoming common.
Nevertheless, one of the challenges advertisers face in providing advertisements on the Web is keeping information current. The Web advertisement, even more than its paper counterpart, is susceptible to becoming quickly stale, unappealing and out-of-date. Web advertising that is months, weeks and sometimes even days old is much less effective than advertising that is frequently revised and updated. In addition, in many industries, the product cycle times have decreased, which in turn has accelerated the requirement to keep advertisements up to date.
Another challenge many businesses face with Online directory listings is the ability to preview their own custom advertising content in the manner it will be viewed by customers over the Web. Currently text only information can be scanned for unwanted or undesirable words prior to insertion into the Online directory database. However, multimedia data, such as audio, video and still images, however, cannot be inspected with the text only previewing techniques.
Still another challenge is for the providers or the producers of Online directory listing to preview advertising content in a manner it will be view by customers over the Web.